1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system intended for real-time supervision of engine test beds used to design engine tests totally independently of the engine test bed likely to accommodate it.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The study of thermal engines or electric motors and of the many parameters that influence their behavior, as well as the compliance with certain standards (anti-pollution standards for example), require engine tests on study or certification benches. Owing to the constantly increasing number of engine control parameters, via the appearance of new technologies, engine parameters are adjusted during several engine calibration phases. In order to reduce the time required to develop an engine, the test centers have to optimize their working methodologies and their equipments.
The studies performed on engine test beds allow conducting a complete study of the operation of internal-combustion engines by studying the influence of the various adjustable parameters on the operation of the engine.
An engine test bed is associated with a supervision system (acquisition and control system) whose software organization allows designing and driving such engine tests. FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional hardware architecture associated with an engine test bed supervision system. The engine test bed (BEM) includes the engine (MOT) and of the following elements allowing driving the engine or to analyze the operation thereof:
brake or generator (FG)
automaton (AUT)
gas analysis cabinet (BAG)
smoke meter (AF)
fuel consumption balance (BCC).
An engine test bed supervision software (SOFTW) is generally organized on the basis of a “test configuration” describing the acquisition, control and sequence definition conditions of an engine test considered.
A test configuration can be conducted by the user by means of a “test configuration editor” specific to the supervision software.
This test configuration can then be carried out by the proper supervision software. The supervision software is then put in charge of performing the required data acquisitions and real-time evaluation of the required quantities, and of controlling the resulting set points while guaranteeing safety of the experimentation conditions (permanent safety monitoring). Definition of the sequences of these operations is carried out by the supervision software by means of the real-time core of the computer platform that controls the electronic I/O and digital communication cards via the associated drivers.
According to the conventional organization, each test configuration depends on the specific equipments of each engine test bed. When a test configuration has been designed on the basis of the equipments of an engine test bed No. 1, this test configuration is not directly portable to engine test bed No. 2 because of the heterogeneity of the costly equipments notably dedicated to the brake regulation, gas analysis, fumes analysis and fuel consumption measurement functions. This portability can however be achieved by adapting the test configuration achieved on engine test bed No. 1 to the equipments of engine test bed No. 2 through the modification of the declaration and identification of the I/O specific to the equipments of engine test bed No. 2. The dependency of the list of the I/O of the engine test bed equipments is direct with the test configuration declaration. The necessity of modifying these declarations in the case of porting this test configuration to another engine test bed provided with different equipments is then inevitable.
Conventional supervision softwares only have drivers for controlling the engine test bed equipments. Now, each engine test bed equipment requires a parametrization suited to each test: selection of the measurements to be downloaded, definition of the measurement range, definition of the results format, etc. These operations are carried out by the user during a test configuration edition phase.
For a conventional supervision software (SOFTW), parametrization of a specific software driver is not integrated in the supervision software because this leads to modifying such a software every time the support of a new driver is added. This code is integrated specifically into each driver as shown in FIG. 3, which illustrates three types of equipment (EX, EY and EZ) having each their dedicated driver: PX, PY and PZ respectively. They communicate with a conventional supervision software (SOFTW) and its associated edition software (EDIT). Each driver thus has to integrate both the code of the edition functions of its specific parametrization (for EDIT) and the real-time management code (for SOFTW) of the equipment concerned.
This organization is all the more constraining since it requires managing within each driver the various compatible operating environments for the edition of its specific parameters. In general, the code of the Windows® (Microsoft, USA) dialog box is directly integrated within the driver.
Finally, these various engine test bed control systems do not allow to jointly perform engine control.